Religion Dispatches
…tory and is a relevant interpretation of events happening around the world today. However all of our scripts ask the same important question, ‘What will you do with God’s offer of a saving and personal relationship with His Son Jesus Christ.’” Judgement House “is a dramatic walk-through presentation about the truth of people’s choices and their consequences both in this life and the next…. No other tool is more effective at presenting people with…
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…in the college handbook. Does Crook see a connection between the worldview promoted at Central Baptist and the violence and rejection LGBT people often face? “There’s a lot of talk about religious bigotry,” he says. “About Christians hating other people for the way they act. I don’t think that’s true. We don’t hate them—we love them like we love anybody else. We just happen to disagree with them. That gets turned around into they hate us, and it m…
Read More…he was not thinking about the Civil Rights movement; he was thinking about Vietnam. Given that the spiritual heart of the American civil religion was, for Bellah, a largely prophetic caution against idolizing the nation, and the importance of holding it accountable to transcendent standards of ethical behavior and international justice, Bellah’s decision to focus on foreign rather than domestic policy is less surprising. It also enabled him to ext…
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…elknap/Harvard University, put all of its considerable prestige behind its promotion—in 2007, that is, when Harvard published the book. The fact that the Times slipped the book onto its 2008 list is a clue that such lists aren’t so much a reflection of the best as of what the editors read and cared about that year. That can lead to a certain amount of cronyism—books by Times contributors are especially well represented on the Times’ list—which is…
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…nalysis of the revelations regarding the religious life of the Bushes, see today’s feature: ). Investigative works are often labeled “conspiracy theories.” This term is generally used to suggest that whatever an author has learned, he or she may be a bit unhinged, and we may therefore not take the material seriously. And we are safe to go about our business as usual. While there are people and work, no matter how well intentioned to which the labe…
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…M. Hutchens of the Christian Zionist “Jerusalem Connection,” who has been promoting the piece. Why? Bartholomew: “I can see why Freund would enthuse over this, but it’s less clear why a conservative evangelical like Hutchens would want to promote the idea of 500,000 to 1 million Portuguese and Spaniards embracing a religion other than Christianity. Such are the mysteries of Christian Zionism.” Coral Ridge Ministries Produces Is Jesus God?: Since…
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…erican Jews who want the occupation to end. Some of us marched against the Vietnam War and even the Iraq War. Some of us give money to help victims in Darfur and fund shelters for battered women here at home. Few of us can bring ourselves to say much out loud about the battering of an entire people, if we are within the Jewish communal tent. Until very recently, I was in that category, looking back on my own reactions to sundry allegations of bad…
Read More…ve long been critical of the Air Force Academy’s tolerance for, and indeed promotion of proselytizing and coercive evangelizing of cadets. MMRF’s objection to McClary is only the latest in a ongoing battle between MMRF and the Air Force Academy. MMRF became involved after one of its members who attends the academy complained about McClary, saying that attendance at the luncheon is technically optional, but “strongly encouraged.” According to MMRF…
Read More…Protestant churches through the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, anti-Vietnam War movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the battles for women’s rights and gay rights in the ‘70s and ‘80s. However, they lost many of their foot soldiers during the Clinton era, when they went into hibernation inside a non-descript office building titled “the God Box” (because of all the religious organizations housed therein). While hunkered down in this…
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…appraisal of how religion, politics, and economics were interwoven in post-Vietnam American culture and society, To Serve God and Wal-Mart is also a bracing reminder that we, among the most materialistic people in the world, have turned a blind eye to the impact of material conditions on our actions, attitudes, and beliefs. Simply put, the 2008 election’s voting bloc du jour, “Wal-Mart Moms,” are more than a pundit’s wet dream or Rodeo Drive’s wor…
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